"...there [are] so many indications to assure that The Netherlands is going to extend its mission in Afghanistan".

He speaks regularly with commanders who have just returned from service in Afghanistan. This combined with information from public sources leads him to believe that there is no question that the mission in Afghanistan will be prolonged.

Eigthy percent of the almost thirty soldiers coming back from Afghanistan with whom he has spoken are convinced that the war cannot be won. The soldiers also told him that they see the mission as a combat mission. Even the highest-ranking officer in the Dutch armed forces, General Dick Berlijn, feels that the term 'reconstruction mission' is inaccurate.

"[...] It's not a combat mission or a reconstruction mission. It's both of those things. [...]'. Journalist Henk Hofland writing in July: 'By now everyone has figured out that we're dealing with a 'combat mission' [...]".

Novelist and reporter Arnon Grunberg writes in the November 2nd edition of NRC Handelsblad:

"The current debate being held in The Netherlands concerning the extension of our mission in Afghanistan is futile for several reasons. For starters, the decision to extend the mission has already been made. The MP that noted that the Lower House was an extension of [the popular talkshow] Barend & Van Dorp was right. High-ranking Dutch officers in Afghanistan are prepared to concede that a decision has already been made, provided that they remain anonymous. [...] Of course there are geopolitical reasons for NATO's presence in Afghanistan. One look at the map can convince anyone of that. But the electorate, which prefers to be spoken to in childlike terms, considers geopolitics to be a dirty word."

In the same newspaper on the same day, J.H. Sampiemon writes:

"The Netherlands had intended to pull its troops out of Afghanistan by the middle of next year. It was agreed upon; others would take over the job. Meanwhile the cabinet is giving the impression that it would like to reconsider that clear-cut position. It's no longer about replacing, but about supplementing with a Dutch contingent reduced by a few hundred soldiers. The public is being fooled into believing that we now have a kind of moral obligation "not to let the Afghan people down"'.

"My understanding is that the Dutch will remain on some of the bases".

This brings up the question: 'What does Arnall know that we don't?' The commander of the Dutch armed forces, Dick Berlijn, is in favor of extending. Minister of Defense Van Middelkoop as well, though he later retracted his statement.

Sampiemon:

"Once again a fog of opinion has grown around a decision which has practically already been made, though not yet formally."

Leave or stay in Uruzgan?, is the question that current
affairs program EenVandaag posed to two Afghanistan veterans from the
former Soviet Union in a report
entitled The lessons of the Red Army.

Colonel Genaddy Shorokhov says in
the report that with 1400 men - the amount of Dutch troops in
Afghanistan - it's possible to control one square kilometer. He says
that reconstruction is pointless in a war zone. General Berlijn sees
it differently: 'The fact that the Dutch are being engaged frequently
does not rule out reconstruction, Berlijn claims. He feels that an
increase in security goes hand in hand with reconstruction.'

General
Lev Serebrov tells EenVandaag:

"[The Afghan] sees [...] any army that
finds itself in his territory as an aggresor. Whether we like it or
not, he's going to shoot. Whether you like it or not, you're not going
to change the worldview of the average Afghan just like that. We
weren't able to do it in ten years. For the Afghan, Islam and his
country come first, everything else after that."

Serebrov's advice is to
leave the country and let things transpire as they inevitably will:
fighting out the disagreements and dividing up the power.

"The Taliban is a consequence of American and Pakistani support provided to the Mujahideen and this support was part of the strategy
to hamper the Soviet Union when that country was waging war during the
1980's in Afghanistan. More American support followed in May of 2001.
At the time the Taliban received considerable financial support
from the U.S. in its successful fight against opium. Since then opium
production has increased greatly and 'the fight against drugs is a spearhead of the joint military operation of The Netherlands [...]."

In 2001 the Taliban fell out of favor
with the U.S. when it chose not to cooperate on the construction of an
oil pipeline. The Taliban came into public view after President Bush
made the link between this group and Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden ended
up in that country after he had worn out his welcome in Sudan. This
country had offered to hand him over to the U.S., but the U.S. refused. When the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden shortly after the attacks on America, the U.S. once again refused and began their build-up for the war against Afghanistan. Meanwhile The Netherlands is also fighting the Taliban.

Reports of Taliban killed by the Dutch appear regularly in the press.
This is misleading because in practice it's not so simple to determine
who belongs to the Taliban. When at a certain point a number of Afghans
wanted to fight alongside Dutch troops, a soldier used
red and white military cordon tape to distinguish them from the
Taliban. And distinguishing them while bombardments are going on is
totally out of the question.

This was made clear just recently when, out of 65 Afghans killed in the city of Deh Rawod, half of the victims consisted of women and children. 'A
human rights representative from the United Nations, Richard Bennett,
said Monday that in the first four months of this year, between 320 and
380 civilians have been killed in military operations in Afghanistan.
[...] Bennett also said that it's often difficult for the Americans and
other NATO soldiers to distinguish between the Taliban, other rebels
and civilians. Many Afghans have weapons in their homes and they may
protect their homes. They might not be Taliban, but on the other hand
they might be Taliban or other insurgents", said Bennett.' 'In late
June the Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out at The Netherlands
with unprecentented severity over the fighting around Chora and in
particular over the use of Panzer Howitzers, a long-range cannon
artillery system.

"You don't open fire at a distance of 30 kilometers
from the target. If you do that you are almost sure to produce civilian
casualties'', said Karzai. Newspapper Trouw writes:
'The Dutch Panzer Howitzers fired on Chora without acquiring the
target. According to [the commander of ISAF, General] McNeill, that's
contrary to the military's rules of engagement. When firing, a clear
distinction must be made between a military target and civilian
objects.'

Grunberg writing in the NRC: 'I dare say that the Dutch state isn't any
worse for the wear from this mission, and our influence within NATO has
also increased a bit thanks to Afghanistan. (For wounded soldiers and
the families of fallen soldiers, I'm afraid that the state is a cynical
entity)'. That quote also refers indirectly to Dutch participation in
the Iraq war. The facts upon which The Netherlands based sending
soldiers to Iraq are still a secret. Investigations into similar
missions have taken place in the U.S. and England. Not in The
Netherlands.

In March NRC Handelsblad wrote
under the headline Iraq investigation remains behind 'iron curtain':
'It was some strong verbal artillery that Bert Koenders - now Labor
Minister for Development Cooperation, back then opposition MP -
employed in Parliament on June 30, 2004. "Undemocratic" is how he
referred to the government's position, after then Minister of Defense
Kamp had made clear during debate that no further information would be
provided as to why the Balkenende government gave political support to
the war against Iraq. "The iron curtain has fallen", concluded Koenders
bitterly. Almost three years later it's clear that even with Koenders
and the Labor Party in the coalition government, that curtain will
remain closed for the time being.'

President Bush and Prime Minister Blair openly made use of a system
that provided them with information via UN weapons inspectors and
intelligence services like the CIA during the run-up to the Iraq war.
But behind closed doors they followed a secret course of action in
which the deception of the outside world was most important.
DeepJournal reported on this before, during and after the war.

The
Netherlands was made part of this deception. To what extent the
government was kept in the loop on the deception is unknown. Alongside
this important question is another even more important one. Now that
it's become clear that the countries which formed the foundation of the
attack on Iraq did so based on faulty information, it's important to
know on what information The Netherlands based its participation in the
war against Iraq, and it's continuing participation in the war in
Afghanistan.

Part of that information consists of a British report that Balkenende
got from his colleague Blair, in which it was claimed that Iraq could
mount a strike with weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. This
claim has been proven false. The TV program Nova wrote
in August 2003: '[Dutch Prime Minister] Balkenende said Thursday that
Blair's report did 'not figure conclusively' in determining the Dutch
cabinet's position on the Iraq question.

It was one of the sources with
which the cabinet formed its opinion. [...] The decision was dictated
primarily by the fact that Saddam Hussein had for years refused to
comply with Security Council resolutions requiring him to disarm. "The
cabinet felt that that had gone on long enough," according to the
minister. Minister of Defense Kamp then refused to respond to
questions, in particular from Labor, GroenLinks and D66, requesting
insight into the investigation by the Dutch Military Intelligence and
Security Service [MIVD] into the British report.'

Prime Minister Balkenende based his decision on a report that appeared
to be inaccurate, on notes made by the MIVD on this report, and on
other sources. What did the notes made by the MIVD consist of? 'The
contents of confidential documents from the Military Intelligence and
Security Service (MIVD), which were published by NRC Handelsblad in
June of 2004, indicate at any rate that the MIVD's thinking on weapons
of mass destruction was considerably more nuanced than what the
American and British leaders expressed in their conclusions', wrote NRC editor Joost Oranje in his newspaper in March. If the MIVD nuanced
the British sources (later proven to be false), then there must have
been very little value attributed to those qualifications by the Dutch
government. Henk Hofland wrote
in February in the NRC: 'In all respects - political, military,
international law - the cabinet should have known better.

Did it
consciously cut itself off from undesireable information? Did the
ministers not understand that they were helping to unleash pandemonium?
Why aren't we allowed to know that now?' 'Intelligence expert Kees
Kalkman thinks that the MIVD reports were perhaps a little 'too
nuanced': 'It's odd that the minister didn't even have the MIVD report
read in private. That would suggest that the MIVD report could be
interpreted differently', writes the Groene Amsterdammer.

What else was there besides the qualification by the MIVD of the
British documents? There were the 'other sources' that Balkenende
talked about. What did they consist of? Did The Netherlands have other,
better sources than England and the U.S.? That's highly unlikely. It's
much more likely that The Netherlands placed its confidence in sources
from England and the U.S., among them perhaps the now notorious speech
by Powell to the UN Security Council. Those sources proved to be false.
As soon as Prime Minister Balkenende will make a disclosure of the
facts, parliament and the government can then determine - based on the
new data - whether it's prudent to extend the mission in Afghanistan or
to discontinue it.